George Orwell | Quotes Collection

"The real test of character is how you treat someone who has no possibility of doing you any good." George Orwell

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right." George Orwell

"The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside" George Orwell

"A man receiving charity always hates his benefactor- it is a fixed characteristic of human nature" George Orwell

"The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better." George Orwell

"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." George Orwell

"The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded." George Orwell

"Rich people are poor people with money." George Orwell

"I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane." George Orwell

"All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue." George Orwell

"In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer." George Orwell

"A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses." George Orwell

"The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule , between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world : that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war , which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands." George Orwell

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." George Orwell